


The Nurse at Fort Vaux

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Heavy Angst, Nurse Clarke, Soldier Bellamy, The angstiest, World War I, Wow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 16:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18391754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: Bellamy and Clarke were not meant to be--the war to end all wars made sure of that. Bellamy went to the front, and Clarke joined the Nurse's Corps, but it seems that fate has brought them back together again (and again and again and again). // 3rd Place: Round II Theme, 3rd Place: Best Use of Trope - Exes, 3rd Place: Best Use of Trope - Time Loop/Groundhog Day, 3rd Place: Most in Character





	The Nurse at Fort Vaux

**Author's Note:**

> world war i meets edge of tomorrow meets that one scene in wonder woman meets...i don't know it's angsty and it's bellarke and it's a Whole Lot you have been warned // Thanks so much to everyone who voted for this fic!! It felt like a stretch in a couple categories, so I was really surprised that it won. Thank you for reading and for your support and can’t wait to write for y’all in the Championship Round!

_June 3, 1916_

French artillery holds the German infantry back from the ridge of Côte 304, as whispers spread of enemy reinforcements; Bellamy wonders if there is any place left of his beautiful homeland that isn’t covered in bullet casings, trip wire, and artillery shells. Maybe, somewhere, kids are skipping about, no gas masks hastily stuffed under their arms, just in case. Windows aren’t smashed, the streets don’t echo with the stomping of heavy boots, in formation, and the sky is the truest blue.

But not in Verdun.

Here, trees and villages and men are reduced to rubble. The skies are smeared with fog and gunpowder, ash floats on the air over miles of trenches that trade inches for blood. A machine gun is always rattling its incessant rhythm, either in the distance, a morose reminder, or close enough to shatter teeth and still hearts. Men step back from the guns when they’re relieved, and accept the position again when it’s required of them. It doesn’t feel like war, it feels like feeding birds: an easy flick and slight direction, although instead of scattering crumbs to pigeons around the Fontaine Saint-Michel, the gun spits artillery shells across the field, and Germans fall. Barbed wire and bayonets litter the ground between trenches, bodies stacked among them, as the dead wait for the cover of night to be buried.

“Alright, boys, you know our orders.”

The men of the 124th Division look up at the general’s words, barely reacting. Hands check rifles, on instinct, others clench crucifixes or graze wedding rings. Eyes fix on the patch of sky above the communication trench, their little barricade south of Fort Vaux. The barricade they have to hold, the line they refuse to yield, the last hope for the garrison inside the thick walls of the fort.

They do know their orders—do not back down.

Fort Vaux is the last French stronghold before Verdun, and behind its walls are nearly 650 of their fellow man. Some wounded, some nearly dead, all weary.

Bellamy checks the bayonet on his rifle, rolling his shoulders a bit.

“Dawn’s breaking,” the General says, quiet. He looks around at the men in the trench with him, most of them half his age. Something passes behind his eyes, and he tosses a cigarette over the edge of the trench. “Time to wake the devil.”

A month ago, they’d have cheered.

Waved their rifles, shouted a battle cry, ran with crazed fervor down the trenches. But now the men nod slowly, a horrible and hollow glint in their eyes, and walk past their commander.

They know when the enemy spots them.

The artillery ceases against the side of the fort, a pause as the gunman reconsiders, and then there’s a shout that goes up as his infantry helps him move the gun. And then they’re dancing, the 124th Division, darting across the ground and in and out of foxholes, behind anything that will hide them from the artillery shells.

The shells hit everything.

The deep thud when they lodge in mud, muted, the cry that rips from a man's lungs when they strike flesh. The sickening sound of body crumbling to the earth, the metal bouncing off abandoned turrets and guns. Trees are churned up in the firing, and the soil uncovers new horrors; Bellamy knows better than to look.

Not far to Fort Vaux now.

More men dance, and more men fall, but some make it past the barricade, towards the tunnels that will deliver them into the fort.

And that’s when he sees her.

Hair flying in the morning wind, dress whipping about her as she whirls. At the edge of the tunnel, defiant and unafraid, directing men to run across the way.

They follow her.

Listen to every order, obey it without question, even the generals. A man passes her and she pulls a gun from his belt; she fires it under her arm without looking and an enemy soldier crumbles as he steps around the corner.

Bellamy hadn’t seen him coming.

She turns, fires twice more across No Man’s land, and two men fall out of the fog. She drops the gun, yells at the men to watch their step, and runs.

There’s a whistle in the wind.

Men hurl themselves into the sides of the trenches, hands covering heads, clutching their helmets and a few watch in horror as she runs. She passes a fallen man and picks up the rifle he was clutching, then stops short. She plants her feet and squints at the skyline.

Bellamy doesn’t realize what she’s doing until the grenade is in the trenches. But then she swings and it’s gone again and the explosion sets his ears ringing. She drops the rifle, satisfied, and though her back is to him, he still sees her shoulders slouch.

“Hello, Bellamy.”

So it is her.

She’s not an apparition, not a mirage he’s conjured in the hell of battle; she’s actually here.

Clarke Griffin turns in the trench, a dirty hand leaving a streak of mud on her forehead as she pushes her hair out of her face. The last time he’d seen her, her hair had been shorter, and illuminated by sunlight.

\- - -

_“I think you should go to Switzerland.”_

_Clarke’s fingers don’t untangle from the flowers she’s arranging, but she tilts her head so her hair falls away from her face. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bell; you just got back from the front.”_

_That’s exactly the problem, but he’s not sure how to say it. “You should take your father’s offer,” he presses on, the words tasting bitter, feeling even worse, “go east before the war gets any closer.”_

_She lifts a hand from the lilies, places it on her heart, for a moment, expression pointed. “The war can’t get any closer.”_

_He doesn’t deserve this, her softness, her trust. He clenches his fists at his sides, forces his next words out. “I’m going back.”_

_She freezes._

_Her hands still and then she looks at him, eyes terrified. “You can’t be serious.”_

_“I wouldn’t joke.”_

_“Bellamy, you just got back—”_

_“It would help me,” he interrupts, determined to choke out the words that are strangling him, “to know you’re in Switzerland. To know you’re safe.”_

_“You think I can sleep here, much less in Switzerland, when every moment I’m wondering if you’re still alive?”_

_Of course he doesn’t think that, doesn’t think she can do anything less than love with her whole being. He’s just not worth it._

_When he doesn’t say anything, she goes back to the flowers, voice determined. “I’ll stay here,” she says, “as close as I can, waiting for you.”_

_It breaks his heart, how much she cares for him, but that’s why he has to push on. She has so much ahead of her, so much life, so much peace and happiness that he will only mar, and the sooner she’s free of him the better._

_“I’d rather you didn’t.”_

_His tone hits hard, and she flinches. She’s gone pale, and she swallows slowly, her eyes searching his face._

_“You don’t mean that,” she says, her voice fragile._

_Of course he doesn’t, of course he wants her to stay in Calais, as close as the war will allow. He wants to wake up every morning, in whatever ditch or dungeon on the front, and know if he can endure the day, he can make it back to her._

_But what if he doesn’t?_

_What if he dies, what if his body rots in a trench in Luxembourg and Clarke has to grieve him? What if her youth is stolen the way his has been sold; what if she carries the weight of this war past him? She deserves more than that._

_“I do,” he says quietly. He can’t look at her, can’t bear to see the look on her face. So he turns quickly and strides from the room, the last mental image secured of his love among lilies, radiant in the morning sunlight, unaware of the ways both of their worlds were about to crumble._

\- - -

An artillery shell lands just short of the trench, the whistle and impact pull Bellamy out of a memory, into the present. The present, in the trenches at Verdun, face to face with a woman he’d nearly killed himself for giving up.

“How are you here?” he asks, and it’s the first of a million questions he has.

“Nurse’s Corps,” she says, gesturing to her apron, and Bellamy sees the emblem. “Three years.”

His mouth snaps shut because that had been the next thing he was going to ask—how long.

How long has she been in France, how long has she been serving, how long has she been in this nightmare they all called reality.

“Come on,” she says quietly, a small frown creasing her forehead, “they need us inside.”

He nearly chokes when he steps into the tunnels under Fort Vaux, the stench is so strong. Corpses pile up along the walls, sandbags stuffed between them as insulation.

Clarke doesn’t blink. She moves quickly through the tunnels, nearly pitch black, stepping around obstructions, lifting her skirt.

“Duck,” she calls over her shoulder; he does, and the building shakes with debris.

They round a corner, and Clarke swears quietly before breaking into a jog.

What can Bellamy do but follow her?

Down a narrow corridor, into another, turning and twisting in the belly of Fort Vaux, until they break into another hallway. Men stand behind a gun, grenades in hand, warily facing a sandbag barricade as it quivers; they turn sharply to look at them, and Clarke holds out her hand. Confused but compliant, one of the men hands her his grenade. She moves towards the sandbags, closes her eyes, and counts.

She opens her eyes, and looks back at the room.

“Run,” she says.

The men do, wide-eyed, backing down the hallway.

The firing stops, Clarke whips back the sandbag, pulls the pin from the grenade and replaces the sandbag. She’s running then, and Bellamy joins her, pressing his hands over his ears.

When the explosion comes, the sound waves are overwhelming, ricocheting off the sides of the tunnels. Then there’s a crackling, but it’s liquid; Clarke veers hard down another tunnel.

“Flamethrower,” she explains, as Bellamy follows her.

She swoops down to grab a pack of bullets from a fallen man; in the next tunnel, a soldier is desperately checking his belt for a reload when Clarke presses the box into his hand.

She holds out an arm as they’re crossing another pathway, pausing, and then a roar of flames licks down the hallway, incinerating where they would have stood. She tilts her head when the fire pauses; Bellamy steps out from the tunnel, aims without thinking, and the soldier crumbles.

They continue on.

It’s surreal, the way she almost anticipates the dangers lurking in the fort. Every soldier, every explosion, every cry and every piece of shrapnel, she’s ready for them. She presses a bandage over a man’s gaping chest wound, she shouts a translation between regiments, she grabs a cage of pigeons a moment before the table is riddled with bullets.

“Ask me,” she says, so calmly, and it shouldn’t surprise him that she can still read him this well.

“How are you doing this?” he asks, wishing they had better light so he could see her face.

“Long story,” she responds. Which doesn’t assuage his curiosity, but it at least confirms that he’s not imagining it.

They’re in one of the towers now, and Clarke nods to the man in the window. He’s using a mirror, Bellamy sees, reflecting the early morning sunlight, and he surrenders the glass.

He didn’t know Clarke knew morse code, but across the river, someone is signaling back. When the transmission stops, she checks the watch on her wrist and frowns slightly. Pursing her lips, she looks out the window, down towards the communications trench, then back at her watch. Somewhat resigned, she withdraws; her shoulders press against the stones of the tower and she leans back. Bellamy joins her.

They don’t say anything for a moment.

“I’ve lived this day before,” Clarke says quietly. “That’s how I know what’s coming.”

Bellamy looks down at her, her head tilted against the stone, eyes closed. Tired, tired in a way he recognizes, in a way no one should have to be.

“Like in a dream?”

Clarke sighs, and squints of her eyes open. ”You can’t hate me so much as to imagine me a monster who dreams of this.”

“I don’t hate you.”

He says it without thinking, the words escaping him before he can call them back.

“I know,” she says softly, “and I don’t deserve that.”

Her eyes are closed again, and Bellamy stares at her, trying to understand.

How is she so calm? How does she not have a thousand questions for him? How are things just as they were, and yet so different? How is this woman the same woman who begged him to refuse to return to the front? She’d said he’d served enough already, said she hated the hollowness in his eyes, and now hers are the depths that frighten him.

There’s another burst of artillery outside and Clarke jolts, pushing away from the wall. Below, a troupe of men crouches under rapid fire from the enemy guns.

“Come on,” Clarke whispers.

Bellamy follows her gaze, her eyes sharp and agitated, leaping from man to man as they fall in the trenches.

“Come on,” she whispers, and another round rings, and more stumble. Clarke’s knuckles are white as her hands curl into fists on the window. “Please,” she whispers.

Begs.

And the last man falls.

Clarke hits the window; the glass shatters and the skin on the back of her hand tears as she hits it again.

“Hey!” Bellamy moves quickly, trying to pull her away from the window, feels Clarke’s pulse pounding in her wrists as she fights him.  

“What do I have to do??” she yells, and he doesn’t think it’s at him, but he can’t be sure, “What do you want from me??”

“Clarke, what—”

“Let go!”

“Not until you’re okay,” he says, stubborn. He has her arms firmly in his, restraining her, and he can feel her wrists straining as she tries to break free. Then the straining turns to trembling, and her head is bent too sharply for her to be anything other than trying to hide her face. Which she’s only ever done when she’s crying.

“Clarke...”

He lets go of her and her hands come up immediately, pressing over her eyes, hiding. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” he says, and it’s true. None of this is fine, not this awful war, not the horrors they’ve seen in the last hour, or the last five months, not her being hurt.

“I’m fine,” she says quickly, voice harsh. She shakes herself, steadies herself, lets her hands fall and shakes them out at her side. “I knew 47 was too large and now I know 33 isn’t enough; I’ll try 38 next time.”

“47 of what?”

“No, 38,” Clarke says, nodding to herself, “I’ll try 38 tomorrow.”

She looks up at him, and through whatever mask she’s committed to wearing, he can still see her desperation and determination and exhaustion.

“Okay,” Bellamy agrees, carefully, “Tomorrow we’ll try 38.”

Her eyes flash.

Then she smiles, too bright, nodding again. “Sure we will. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

He looks out the window, at the morning sun breaking over the massacre. From up here, it’s different. Detached. Soldiers move and fall, weapons aim and fire, gas and smoke billow across the fields. Trees and men alike sway, helmets of different colors tumble, fire bursts occasionally. Farther back, their supply lines run. Trucks, inching through mud, entire regiments dedicated to their journey because those trucks mean food, and bandages, and word from Command Central. Doctors run among the fighting, and their aides, generals pace and nurses are everywhere and it’s still not enough. Blood and soil look a similar red.

He feels Clarke’s eyes on him, and when he looks back at her, her face has gone soft. Her eyes are wounded, and blue, and exactly how he remembers them, when remembering is the only thing to keep him from going insane.

She knows.

She has to know, has to see it in his face, that she’s still a part of him. That where his heart is beating its rhythm, its whispering for her, and promising that he’ll come back.

There’s footsteps on the stairs, and Bellamy sees it in her face, that she still knows what’s coming. But she doesn’t move, doesn’t turn to the door, but stays in front of him, hair radiant and eyes mourning.

The steps are getting closer.

Then Clarke moves, and her small hands are framing his face, the mud and blood on them against his skin and she pulls him to her.

She kisses him.

It’s desperate and it’s nothing like the kiss the gardener’s son shared with the marquis’ daughter, but it’s new and it’s bittersweet and it’s over too soon.

Her face is stricken when she pulls back.

“I’m sorry,“ she whispers, her face a breath from his, and she covers her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Bellamy.”

“It’s okay—”

“It isn’t,” she shakes her head. “But I had too; it’s been so long, and I just had to see...I’m so sorry, you...you won’t remember anyways.”

Bellamy’s mind is reeling and the steps are at the door, and there’s a pounding, a rifle hitting the wooden slats, but he still doesn’t understand. “Clarke, I don’t—”

“It’s alright,” she says, a serene smile on her lips. “Goodnight, Bell.”

The door opens, enemy soldiers burst through it and Clarke’s body contorts when their bullets lodge in her chest, her torso, her shoulder. She falls to the floor, hair splayed like a halo, blood pooling around her, her sweet smile still fixed on her face.  

 

_June 2, 1916_

“Nurse!” cries a soldier, the bandage in his side soaked through.

“Nurse!” cries a general, looking down the tunnels at more men who need assistance.

“Nurse!” cries a boy, eyes dilated and breathing uneven, body already given up.

“Nurse!” cries a doctor, needing hands to hold a soldier steady as his stomach is sewn back together.  

Clarke’s vision is blurring; her hand shakes as she presses another bandage to another wound. This is what her life has become since joining the Nurse’s Corps—an endless stream of muslin over torn flesh. Rosewater over gashes, forceps over entry wounds, tape over foreheads, everything she can do to stop the bleeding, ease the pain. It’s never enough.

Tomorrow, she thinks, as she stumbles away from the main hall at Fort Vaux, down a heady corridor that reeks of death and dying and fire.

Tomorrow, she’ll save more of them.

Tomorrow, she’ll fix a few more, some men who have families and loves back in Paris or Lyon or Nice, waiting for them; tomorrow she’ll make sure they get to go home.

 

_June 3, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

Her supervising nurse continues down the tunnels, broad skirts sweeping over mud and crushed gas masks, fading into the darkness in less than a dozen steps. Clarke adjusts her own uniform, the thick material stained with blood and ash and more blood, before pushing herself to her feet. The corridor isn’t quiet, nothing at the front is, but the moans and the artillery are muted. Clarke knows the solace won’t endure, and she rolls her neck as she follows Vera.

It used to be a galley, back when only one garrison was stationed at Fort Vaux, but now it’s their makeshift infirmary, and it’s teeming. The dying men seem to sense her; the moment Clarke crosses the threshold, they renew their cries for a nurse, necks craning as she walks by. One man asks for water, another for her to write a letter, another for her to stop the pain, another for her to kill one specific German for him (he’s short and has blonde hair and a scar under his eye). She trades relief for favors; the men to whom she sneaks extra rations will carry the dead out of the fort till her shift is over.

The doctors cut off a boy’s leg. He’s nineteen, he says, gritting his teeth as the amputation begins. Clarke sits next to him, holds his hand, and he says she has hair like the girl who lives across town from him, Danielle.

He tells her about the green of her eyes, the dip in her upper lip, the way she loves Italian novels, before the pain catches up with him and his head falls back, unconscious. Clarke uncurls her hand from his, flexing her blue fingers.

Clarke changes filthy bandages, pours drops of water over chapped lips, walks with a hunch in her back because she’s been bent for so long that if she stands up straight, she’ll faint. The pocketwatch of a man whose lungs are filled with diphosgene reads 10:42 when an explosion shakes the structure. Someone yells for a nurse, and Vera’s hands are full of another man’s intestines, so Clarke runs out of the galley.  

Never, never, will she get used to the smell of burned flesh.

The hallway is dark, even though it’s well into morning, but it’s glowing red. Gasoline is sloshed up the side of the tunnel, and flames are leaping from the walls inward. A man is on his knees, arms covered in black and burned skin, his eyes blown with pain; another soldier is hurling sandbags at the walls, trying to quell the flames. Another man lies on the ground, his face melted and body contorted. Dead.

Clarke’s stomach heaves but there is no time for humanity; she pulls a bottle from her apron and douses a rag in the laudanum. The man on his knees has started whimpering and Clarke cuts the noise with the cloth. The alcohol probably stings, and he struggles on instinct, but Clarke’s elbow under his neck holds him steady; the other soldier in the tunnel watches her warily as the man’s body sags. She lowers him to the ground, ignoring the yellow stains his burns leave on her skirt.

“Carry him,” she commands the other man, and he reacts rather than obeys.

He’s hefting the unconscious man onto his shoulders when the sandbags by the door rip open, no longer strong enough to hold the bullets.

The soldier drops the man and his arm hits her waist, hard. Clarke can’t breathe as she falls, can’t breathe when her back lands on the mud, hard. Above her, the air is cracking, and bullets fly where she’d stood moments before.

The barricade is falling.

Weakened by fire, now by bullets, the barricade is falling and Clarke and the two soldiers are in the middle.

She rolls onto her stomach, looking back towards the galley; new soldiers are rolling in a heavy gun, beginning a new barricade. They look at each other uncertainly—help the nurse and the men with her, or defend the line.

“Hold the line,” she tells them, and reaches back for the drugged man.

She and the soldier drag him, but then suddenly the soldier hisses and the man gets heavier and Clarke realizes she’s pulling the burned man alone.

“Leave him,” yells another soldier, feeding a string of shells into the gun, ”Get behind us.”

A cold feeling settled in Clarke’s spine.

She should leave him, should leave his burns and his body to the enemy and jump to safety behind the gun. Run past the new barricade, clench her hand over her ears, pretend not to hear when the gun spits death once the sandbags fall.

But Clarke can’t.

Because she’s the one who drugged him.  

If she hadn’t, the soldier would be crawling next to her; he’d be in screaming agony, but he’d be cognizant.

And the other soldier, he’d still be alive.

Clarke grits her teeth; the firing is louder and she can read the disbelief on the soldiers’ faces as she tightens her grip on the man’s collar.

She can’t leave him.

A general’s chin dips, and two men jump from behind the gun, crouch-running towards her. One of them scoops under her arms, his elbows hooking into her shoulders as he drags her backwards, the other soldier grabs the burned man’s legs. They stumble back towards the gun, and the man holding her shoves her behind it. The unconscious man is hefted over next, then the soldier who helped him.

The barricade falls before the last man can get behind the gun.

The hallway erupts in front of her; flames eating at the fallen men, bullets answering with unrelenting clamor. The general pulls the pin from a grenade and everyone flinches.

The grenade explodes when it hits the flamethrower and the ringing of it drops Clarke to her knees. Nobody can hear anything, but they can see the fire burning the enemy advances.

They retreat.

The general is calling orders and Clarke still can’t hear past the deafening ringing in her ears, but she sees men rush forward to secure the old barricade. More sandbags are placed over the busted ones, coats suffocate the fires still burning. They push the fallen to the side of the tunnels but leave them.

Clarke retreats too.

As she’s heading back to the galley, a firm hand closes on her upper arm.

“It’s my decision,” the general says, his voice low, “who is worth sacrificing. You cost me two men, and you saved another, but if you had died, there’s no telling how many men that would have cost me. Understand?”

She does.

She never tries to be the hero, never tries to make the hard decisions, but they seem to just land in her lap, and command her hands to work.

She sees what he means though, so she nods.

Clarke doesn’t fear death, but she fears leaving the world worse when she does go.

The general lets go of her arm, turning back to his men, helping them with the barricade, and Clarke makes her way back to the galley.

More bandages, more water promises of water, more scribbled letters, more sutures. Amputations and anesthesia, lungs filled with fluid and with smoke, and when Clarke stumbles to the corner of the galley fourteen hours later, she hopes she dreams simple dreams.  


_June 3.1, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

She frowns at Vera’s retreating skirt; the strangest sense of deja vu pricking her mind.

Hadn’t Vera said that yesterday? Hadn’t she woken her with the same words, the same sweep of a uniform over gas masks and mud?

Clarke’s fingers trace the stains on her own uniform, and she squints at the material. Didn’t the burned man from the tunnel leave stains on the apron? What of the amputee’s blood?

She shakes herself as she stands, head spinning from the rush of blood.

A rush of blood, that has to be it. A strangely familiar dream, deja vu, something that’s making today remind her of yesterday.

She rolls her neck and walks into the galley, and as she does, the pricking in her mind intensifies. The calls for nurse are nothing new, nothing novel, but it’s more than that. It’s the craning of the necks, the direction from which the calls come, it’s all too familiar.

“Nurse, please, write a letter for me!”

Clarke stops on her walk, turning down to the man just beside the aisle. His bandages need changing, clearly, since she set it last night only—only... last night, she wrapped his head with a muslin cloth. Now, his arm is bandaged in dark cotton.

Like it had been yesterday morning.

“I wrote you a letter,” Clarke says, her voice sounding shaky even to her own ears. “Remember? Yesterday?”

The man shakes his head. “Nurse, I was brought in this morning.”

It can’t be.

It can’t, there’s an explanation. It’s a dream, or a nightmare, or some sick, horrible joke, but she knows it’s not real.

“I wrote you a letter, Alexandre,” she says, “To your daughter, right?”

The man recoils. “How do you know about my daughter?”

“I-I wrote you a letter for her, yester—”

“Nurse!”

Clarke turns, sharp, the clamor of the room only aggravating the pounding in her head.

“Please,” a man begs, “please, the pain; it’s too much.”

“I know,” she soothes, “phantom pain is almost as awful as...”

She stops, looking at the soldier.

It’s only phantom pain after the limb has been amputated, and the gangrenous wound on his forearm is seeping up his elbow.

Just as it had been yesterday morning.

Clarke stumbles backwards, mind spinning, room spinning.

There’s the man asking for a German’s death. There’s the men she bribed with extra rations. There’s the bodies they carried out, only they’re not carried out yet, they’re in the corner of the galley.

Everything.

Everything is as it was yesterday.

“Nurse Griffin!”

Vera’s tone is stern and Clarke steadies her breathing at the reprimand.

“The doctor,” the older woman’s voice is laced with irritation, “has asked you for an assist twice now. Would you kindly _assist_?”

Clarke’s gaze roams the room; the doctor is preparing for an operation. On the table beside him is the boy.

The nineteen year old boy.

The nineteen year-old boy who’d been amputated on yesterday, with the sweetheart from across town, Nanette—no, Danielle.

Clarke crosses the room.

The doctor frowns at her, rubbing antiseptic over the saw. “Are you steady, nurse?”

Of course she isn’t; her mind has convinced her that all of this happened yesterday, that all of this is a dream or something. But she nods, sits on the bed next to the boy and he tells her about Danielle, and her green eyes and love of Italian novels.

When his head lulls back, Clarke’s hands don’t feel as numb as she remembers them being.

The doctor had asked if she was steady; steady is her job. Her responsibility, what’s keeping these men alive. She busies herself with the patients, changing bandages and distributing water and has almost convinced herself that she’s just sleep-deprived when an explosion shakes the structure.

The barricade.

She looks up; the man who she’s attending has a pocketwatch, and it reads 10:42. Vera’s hands are again busy, and Clarke runs out of the galley.

She braces herself for burned flesh, praying she’s wrong.

She isn’t.

The hallway is glowing red and the men need her, need her to be direct, to be strong, to save them, but the sight of the man with burned forearms is too much for Clarke.

She sways.

The tunnel blurs, as flames leap from the walls, and Clarke’s knees hit the mud of the floor before she knows she’s falling.

Steady, the doctor had ordered, steady she must be.

She feels around in her apron, and the laudanum is where it had been yesterday, full. She looks at the man with the burns, his body shaking.

He hadn’t cried like this yesterday.

She’d been faster yesterday, Clarke realizes, she hadn’t almost fainted yesterday.

She pushes herself to her feet, douses the rag she remembers drugging him with, and holds it over him. He doesn’t struggle today; he’s too far gone on the pain.

What happens next…

Clarke remembers just as the bullets rip through the barricade.

 

_June 3.2, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

She gasps in the corridor, hands instinctively clutching her stomach, her chest, where the bullets had lodged.

Nothing.

Nothing but stained uniform, same as yesterday’s yesterday.

“What’s happening?” Clarke whispers, her fingers probing the starched fabric of her apron. She finds the laudanum, the rag, both unused.

“Did you say something, Nurse Griffin?”

Vera has stopped at the end of the corridor, a concerned expression on her face.

Clarke swallows, her throat dry as fresh bandages. “What day is it?”

“Saturday,” Vera says frowning. “The third.”

The third.

It settles over Clarke, the air impossibly thick, and then heavier.

She can’t tell them.

They’ll think she’s insane.

They’ll send her home, send her to a hospital, send her away. And it’ll happen, the burning, the fires, all of it, and she could’ve stopped it.

“Thank you,” Clarke stands quickly, smiling as best as she can. She rushes past Vera, past the galley, away from Alexandre and his letter, Danielle’s lover, and the pocketwatch. Down to a corridor, with three men standing in front of sandbags, waiting.

She recognizes two of them.

One of them, she’s only seen when the life has been burned out of him.

“New orders from the general,” she says, voice sharp, pointing at the sandbags, “Reinforce those.”

They do.

She watches them move, efficient, tired, across the tunnel, and then the barricade is reinforced. She licks her lips, satisfied, and turns from the tunnel.

She hasn’t thought about the waiting.

From now till...10:40-something, was it?

She goes back to the galley.

Writes the letter for Alexandre, tilts the page away from him so he can’t see that she’s writing words before he dictates them. Hold the boy’s hand, winces when he grips her too tightly, but knows it’ll only last for a moment. Changes bandages, fetches water, waits.

At 10:42, the structure rumbles.

Rumbles, not shakes.

Clarke leaves before they call for her, pauses at the door.

They haven’t called for her yet.

Could that mean...

She rushes to the barricade; the air is rank with waste and grime, but it’s not burned.

It worked.

The three men look up at her—the three of them, all of them alive—and she nods like she was expecting it. Back around the corner, she leans against the wall of the tunnel, a hand over her mouth.

She doesn’t know how this is happening.

She doesn’t know why it is.

But what she does know, is that she can do a lot more good with it out here, than she can inside the galley.

 

_June 3.276, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

She goes through the corridors before going back to the galley, telling soldiers where to add sandbags, and dousing walls with water. They don’t have the water to spare, but dealing with the drought would mean seeing tomorrow, and Clarke is resigned from that possibility.

She makes her way back into the galley, promising men water before they ask for it, and sits next to the doctor as he’s preparing to call for a nurse. She smiles at the boy in the bed, taking his hand carefully in hers.

“Tell me about Danielle,” she says quietly, and he makes it to the house he wants to buy on the Rhône before he falls unconscious.  

She writes the letter for Alexandre, tells him that he asked her to write it when they first brought him in, but he must’ve been out of his mind with pain, that’s why he doesn’t remember.

She greets the soldiers as she walks by them through the tunnels, running when she knows she’s behind schedule. They look surprised, and she remembers they don’t remember meeting her. Which means they don’t remember the times they’ve died.

She rounds a corner to quick, and she screams as flames burst from the darkness.

Stupid, she thinks, she should’ve remembered this tunnel.

She’ll get it right tomorrow.

 

_June 3.458, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

She’s been venturing out of the fort more and more, now that she fears no enemy fire. If time won’t kill her, if her mind won’t, then what power does shrapnel have?

All the same, she knows where to dodge and duck. After the first couple of months, she knows where the closest guns inside the Fort are, so she grabs a couple on her way out, and a box of bullets from inside the armory. A lieutenant looks like he wants to protest, but she doesn’t want to explain how she knows he won’t need them tomorrow, so she just walks away.

Outside, the air is filthy, but still cleaner than in the fort.

It’s still heavy with ash and death, but at least it’s not stale.

Clarke breathes deeply, wondering if she does this enough, if somehow her lungs will cling to the smoke. Inhalation is an unlikely death, after all she’s escaped, but it’s something to hope for.

She shoots the soldier from around the corner, barely looking up when she remembers he’s coming. Maybe one day she won’t even have to look.

She crouches towards the trench, sidestepping the hidden mine that killed her twelve yesterdays ago, and breaking into a jog when she hears the whistle of the grenade that killed her seven yesterdays ago. She drops to the ground before artillery fire splits the air (that was her death six days ago), lifting herself off her stomach when she sees the picture of Sarah Bernhardt (five days ago, she’d dragged herself over a buried soldier’s bayonet; that had been one of her worst deaths).

Clarke jumps up then, darting behind a stack of crates as a flame thrower spews fire where she’d just stood (death by fire was pretty painful too, but it was too frequent to be remarkable. Most recently, she’d been incinerated four days ago). She passes her three-yesterday’s death when she announces that she’s a nurse, and French, before dropping into the trench. The men waiting for her raise their rifles, but don’t fire. She commands them down the trench, despite their protesting; a good thirty meters is enough, and she ignores their expression of awe when a bomb lands where they had just stood. Clarke pulls out the guns, and waits.

Sure enough, she sees their shadows just before the enemies breach the trench; she fires and moves quickly when their lifeless bodies fall into the trench.

She used to feel bad about that.

But there is a certain comfort in knowing that if she stays in the fort tomorrow, they’ll be alive and well.

For now, though, she tosses the spent guns on the bloodied soil next to the soldiers, and steps around. She picks the gun off one of one of them; the last week of deaths answered for, now she can properly adventure.

There’s not much in the trenches.

The men busy themselves with finding a place for the Germans, and she moves past them. She doesn’t realize she’s walking back towards the fort until she greets a solid wall of soil, and a lone ladder.

It’s quieter at this end of the trench, so Clarke grasps the rails of the ladder.

It’s always surreal, emerging from the trenches. The air is lighter but the noises harsher. In the trenches, you just hear the clamor—the firing, the igniting, the yelling, the fighting. Above ground, you see the flashes of the guns, bayonets plunging into stomachs, arcs of grenades.

Almost too late, she notices one on its arc towards her. Clarke runs, almost blindly, diving at the first cover she can find. It’s a shallow manhole, maybe a couple of yards from the French line, and Clarke’s ears ring as the grenade fires. She’s getting better at recovering from them, surviving the sound waves that are almost palpable. She opens her eyes to look around the manhole, and realizes she’s not alone.

He notices her the same time she notices him, but Clarke’s gun is already in hand and she has it trained on the German soldier before he registers that the nurse is armed.

“Nicht bewegen,” she says steadily, hoping time hasn’t damaged her years of tutoring.

Obediently, the soldier doesn’t move.

He’s about her age, she guesses, with blue eyes and hair that blends into the mud, hidden under a pickelhaube.

A shot ricochets over their head, and Clarke leans deeper into the damp earth.

“Take that thing off,” she directs, wondering what the point of a German tutor is, if they don’t teach their pupils the word for helmet. “Nimm deinen...um—”

“I speak French, you know; we’re not all illiterate.”

She wasn’t expecting his voice, it’s higher than she would’ve thought. Oddly, it makes him more real.

“I didn’t say you were,” she mumbles.

He takes off his helmet.

“You mind pointing that elsewhere?” he asks, eyes on the gun.

“I do mind,” she says.

“Hmm,” he looks at her carefully, appraising. Then he shrugs, leaning back into the mud, eyes falling closed. “Bet your arm’s already tired.”

Clarke scowls.

So what if it is; she’s crawled and shot a lot today. “Okay, well...take out all your weapons.”

The man cracks an eye open. “Are you serious?”

Clarke clicks off the safety.

The man smirks. “So,” he pulls a knife from his boots, “when did they start arming nurses?”

Clarke watches as he pulls another knife from the same boot, and then another. There are two more blades in his right foot, and they lay in a small pile that makes a metallic click when another joins it.

“It’s not an initiative,” she says, watching the arsenal grow, “some nurses arm themselves.”

“Guess I know a thing or three about that.”

He leans forward, and pulls a pistol from the small of his back. Extra bullets are rolled in his jacket lining, and he surrenders the rifle that was around his shoulder. A string of grenades join the pile.

“What, no Sturmpanzerwagen?” she asks (her tutor didn’t teach her ‘tank’, but she’s heard it enough over the past two-hundred yesterdays).

“That’s in my dress uniform,” he mutters, and with a final pistol from somewhere Clarke doesn't care to investigate further, the man holds up his hands. “Now will you put that away?”

She puts her gun on the pile, as a show of good faith.

Now what?

“What’s your name?” she asks, knowing she can do better, but not really certain what ‘better’ looks like, under the circumstances.

“Murphy.”

“That’s only one name.”

“You didn’t ask for two.”

It’s true, so she shrugs. “Okay. How do you know French, Murphy?”

“Vacation home in Paris,” he says, in a tone too wry to be true.

“You don’t talk like a Parisian.”

The man snorts.

He’s looking at his hands, and something about the way his eyes...Clarke recognizes that look. It’s the expression you wear when you’re left, or leaving, or it doesn’t matter because no matter what, that person’s gone.

“What’s her name?” Clarke asks quietly.

His head snaps up, a wild expression in his face, and then humor rolls over it. And Clarke recognizes that too, the hilarity of desperation, the absolute abandon that comes with impossibility. He huffs, and his eyes return to his hands.

“Emori.”

He says her name like the sweetest, saddest song.

And Clarke knows better, knows she can't get attached, that as long as whatever’s trapping her in this day persists, that’s another day he’s apart from the woman who clearly has a hold of his heart. That until she finds a way out, he’ll stay in this manhole, and Emori will stay impossibly, unattainably, out of reach. It’s not just war and distance between them, it’s time.

But, then again...today doesn’t matter; she can say whatever the hell she wants.

“I bet she’s beautiful,” Clarke says.

Murphy looks at her warily, his eyes probing. After a moment, his face softens, and he looks away again.

“She’s ethereal,” he says, voice reverent.

Clarke smiles. “Tell me about her?”

“Why?”

That is the question.

She should be thinking of a way out of here, trying to get to cover. Or die and reset, at least. But this, this is new. She’s done war as many ways as she can think, died more than she could imagine. The softness in his voice, that’s something she hasn’t seen inside of Fort Vaux. That’s something she hasn’t seen in a while.

“I’ve read enough French poetry,” Clarke says carefully, after a moment.

“You want me to recite Goethe?”

Clarke shakes her head, thinking of the poems she memorized years ago, lives ago. Shining stars and rustling groves, gentle longing and quiet nights—she knew that love once.

Then it left her.

It left her, and she came to war, and now she’s here, in a trench with a German soldier and they’ve both been torn from a part of their soul, with no way back, and Clarke doesn’t want that soft love, she wants to know the love that will break out of this.

Maybe she won’t ever escape this, or maybe she will, but even if she does, she won’t have that love, that pure, summer, love. No one at Verdun will. But Murphy—with whatever flashes in his eyes and clenches his heart—he’ll have the best shot. When she gets them out of this, he’ll have a love to return to, and Clarke wants to hear of that love.

“Tell me about her,” she says again.

He thinks about it for a moment.

“She is everything,” he says, slow. “When I first met her...she saw everything I never wanted anyone to see. Saw it just by looking. Knew it without a word, and I was hers, right at that moment. I would die for her, i would live for her, anything she wanted, for her.”

He tells Clarke the story of how they met. He tells her of cruel parents, of candlelight and caves, of trust deeper than either of them had ever known. He talks of brown hair and brown eyes, and Clarke feels wetness on her cheeks suddenly.

She hasn’t cried, not the entire time she’s been at the front or at Fort Vaux. Not in this infernal loop, not for one moment.

But listening to a soldier speak of the woman his soul loves, something breaks in her.

She shouldn’t have asked.

Shouldn’t have heard his story, his heart, and rebroken hers in the process. She should’ve stuck with her heroics inside the fort, heroics that keep her busy, let her forget this hurt. She should have known this is what it would be like, that his words would bring to mind the dark hair and eyes she knew so well, loved so deeply.

Eyes she’ll never see again.

Murphy is crying too now, lip trembling as he says her name again. And they’re both broken, she realizes, everything is broken and horrible and desolate. This land, their countries, their lives, time, everything.

She hears the whistle of the grenade, knows what the sound means, but when the world explodes in a bright flash, she curls towards it, welcoming the burn and the pain and the way her mind goes hazy for a moment, just a moment, and everything is blurred and out of focus so she’s not the only thing that doesn’t make sense.

 

_June 3.459, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

Call it morbid curiosity, call is macabre masochism, but she walks past the galley. Up to one of the towers, overlooking a field, and waits.

She sees the French counterattack; counts manholes and soon enough, she sees Murphy, the gold of his pickelhaube standing out against the muted browns of the field.

She watches him.

He checks his canteen, tilts his head back, desperate for the stubborn drops at the bottom of it, then chucks it out of the hole when it’s been drained. He lights a cigarette. He takes off the helmet, rolls onto his back, waiting for the barrage to ease.

It’s friendly fire that kills him, this time.

He forgets his helmet when he emerges from the manhole, and they’re firing at anything close to enemy lines; he falls, and from her vantage point, her blood runs cold. His expression isn’t pain, isn’t shock, but his mouth is twisted into an expectant smile.   

And that’s when she learns.

There’s only a certain number of variables in the Fort.

Some people really are just fated to die. She saves them from a flamethrower and they’re blown apart from a grenade; she amputates a hand and they still die of gangrene. Some men are fated to madness, some to rest, eternally unconscious, some to endless agony.

Some to die in a manhole, never to be reunited with their dark-haired love.

Clarke pushes from the window, back to the galley, back to the familiar. If this is the hell she’s assigned, then she has two options.

She can survive. Inch through every day, outlast whatever trick this is.

Or she can find the variables.

Intercede one day, observe the next. See what happens when she interferes; establish where the devil’s jurisdiction ends and hers begins. Scrutinize every frame of reality, take Atlas’ burden for a while, just because she can.

She might as well.

It’s not like she has anywhere else she can go.

 

_June 3.661, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

She has a routine now.

She checks the barricades, tells them which ones to reinforce, which ones to leave unmanned, which ones to double down on. She always say she has new orders from the general, and by now she knows which generals have the clearance to make the command stick.

Vera needs her back around noon, but a reinforcement division comes over at dawn. She’s been at it for about a month now and she’s almost cracked it, getting them all safely inside Fort Vaux.

Timing is everything.

Time is also the one thing she has too much of.

She tells the men by the rear door that General Beauchêne asked them to assist at another barricade; when they leave, she cracks open the door. She balances the gun on her knee, and the enemy snipers covering the door fall in quick succession.

She’s a pretty good shot by now.

She waits—it isn’t long—until the enemy spots the division. That’s her window, Clarke knows, while they’re reloading and repositioning the guns.

“Jules,” she yells, across the field, and the leader of the 124th Division looks up, surprised that a nurse from the Fort knows his name.  

She’s been at this for weeks now, and he had reached Vaux just four days ago; she’d asked his name before the guns had gotten to them both.

Now, she’s up to the first half dozen men from the 124th.

Jules makes it, Hugo falls. Louis makes it, Arthur makes it, Sacha does not.

Clarke clenches her fists, biting the inside of her cheek.

She’ll get all of them one day.

The trees along the ridge are being shredded by the guns, and Clarke wonders if she’ll ever be immune to the pain of seeing her country destroyed. Its men, lying in the dirt, its fauna, torn to pieces.

More men attempt the crossing from trench to fort, more men fall.

Clarke notices absently, when Gabriel passes by her safely, that that’s the farthest she’s ever gotten. Yesterday, he fell just meters short of the door; she’d crawled out to him to ask his name, before another round of bullets claimed them both.

The next head appears above the trench, and Clarke’s world slows.

Bellamy.

Bellamy, with mud and war on his face. Bellamy, a rifle clasped in his arms; Bellamy, head bent as he begins the run.

Bellamy.

She can’t watch.

But she can’t look away, can do nothing other than scream his name.

He looks up.

Clarke clasps a hand over her mouth because what is she doing, what is she thinking, he can’t stop. But he’s rooted to the spot, his mouth parted in shock. His eyes, warm and deep and cutting, even from across the battlefield, widen when they meet hers, disbelief clear. He drops the gun.

No.

Clarke pushes away from the door, leaves the fort and runs across the field, but it’s too late; he’s crumpled by the time that she gets there.

“No,” she cries, sinking to her knees when she gets to him. Her hands are shaking, violently, as she reaches for him, and she’s hovering over his shoulders when shrapnel slices through her torso and she collapses. She forces her eyes open, sees him hazily through her lashes and blurred vision, sees his unblinking eyes and she screams with the breath that she has left because nothing, no torment, no responsibility, no death, is worse than this.

 

_June 3.662, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

She doesn’t make her rounds, doesn’t check the barricades or lend reinforcements, heads straight for the rear door, to the men to whom General Beauchêne’s authority has levity.

It’s not dawn yet, and she slips through the door.

Warning shots crack, but the guns are scanning for people going towards the fort, to relieve it, not people leaving.

She’s almost to the trenches when a searchlight finds her, and three shots ring out across the field.

 

_June 3.663, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

She waits for the searchlight this time, lies still against the mud when it swoops over her, and then she’s on her feet again.

She drops into the trenches soundlessly, and immediately thirty guns are trained on her. Someone lights a match and the men all shrink back when they recognize a nurse instead of an enemy soldier.

“Clarke?”

She could weep when she hears his voice, unsteady from exhaustion and disbelief. The guns are lowered and he pushes through and then here’s there, right there, just in front of her.

“Bellamy,” she whispers, and they both move as they always have, and then his arms are around her, and he’s holding her so fiercely, so tightly, that she knows he’s partly convincing himself she’s real, she’s there.

“I’m here,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

She’s here.

It makes sense now, all of it.

This is why she’s been trapped, this is what she’s supposed to do. Everything she’s learned, she’s learned to save Bellamy. To get him and then men with him into Fort Vaux, to survive, to let them live. If it takes her dying a million deaths, that’s fine. This is what she’ll do. Anything to save him.

“Alright, kids, break this up.”

It’s Jules, and Clarke opens her eyes over Bellamy’s shoulder to look around the trench. There are so many more men, she realizes, so many who don’t make it across the trench.

Bellamy’s grip loosens, just enough so she can stand next to him instead of around him, but his hand is firm on her waist; he’s not letting go. She knows the feeling.

Dawn is breaking.

The sky is hazy through the smoke and ash, but it’s blue, Clarke can see it. When was the last time she looked at the sky? She can feel the heat of Bellamy’s hand through her apron, the comforting presence of him that she never thought she’d get to experience again.  

Wait, dawn is breaking.

They’re behind schedule.

And Clarke hasn’t died out here yet, so they’re fighting blind.

Jules has gone three steps out of the tunnel when they hear the enemy spot him. Two shots ring out, and then the sound of a body hitting the mud. Bellamy turns her into his chest and Clarke realizes that he doesn’t know how many times she’s watched Jules die, how many times she’s watched any one die. How many lives she’s lost.

Someone yells that there’s a grenade, but Clarke doesn’t move, can’t. Because she realizes, before the world explodes, how many times she’s going to have to watch Bellamy die.

 

_June 3.664, 1916_

He dies when shrapnel hits the second wave of the division.

 

_June 3.672, 1916_

He dies when one of his comrades falls, and he slows to help him.

 

_June 3.694, 1916_

He dies when they launch diphosgene at the division, and none of them have time to fix their masks properly.

 

_June 3.724, 1916_

He dies when a land mine is unearthed in machine gun fire.

 

_June 3.775, 1916_

She gets him across the field.

Into the fort, safely, finally. She gets further with him than she does on her own, and she hates it. Hates that she has to have him near, hates that he trusts her so implicitly, after all this time, to do as she asks without questioning.

Still, he dies.  

 

_June 3.819, 1916_

He dies.

 

_June 3.836, 1916_

He dies.

 

_June 3.917, 1916_

He dies.

 

_June 3.?, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

And she stops counting.

The number of times they almost make it.

The number of times they do, and then something else goes wrong.

The number of times he doesn’t believe it’s her.  

The number of times he kills someone because he knew she wanted him to, the number of times he follows her without thinking (every time).

The number of times she watches him die.

From shrapnel, from a bayonet, from a flamethrower, from a pistol, from falling debris, from gas, from a rifle, from a switchblade. Protecting her, distracted by her, following her, holding her, obeying her; after a while, every trigger finger might as well be hers.  

Counting doesn’t make him any less dead, so she just stops.

Instead, she learns the Fort.

Every inch of the darkened tunnels, every body crammed into its corridors. The soldiers manning its turrets, the boys behind its guns. The mine fields out front of it, the well in the heart of it it (it’s near empty), the sandbags and what’s behind them.

Sometimes she’s weak.

She knows he’ll see her if she stands outside, and sometimes she goes. Indulges, lets herself remember the weight of his eyes on her. And she pays the price, each time, as he dies in spite of her.

One day, she kisses him.

Can’t help herself, can’t stop herself, just has to. It’s been two years in his world, and many more than that in whatever loop she’s trapped in. She tells herself it’s to get it out of her system, that maybe it’ll help her move on, but when his lips are against hers, she realizes her mistake. One kiss has never been enough. He tastes like hope and hunger; she takes a bullet and wonders why ripping metal hurts less.

She wakes in the tunnel at Vera’s usual words, face in the mud and the weight of Verdun on her shoulders, and wonders how badly the universe wants to break her.

She wipes the mud from her face and slips morphine into a soldier’s coffee; at least one of them can find sleep.

 

_June 3.2199, 1916_

“We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder and the sound of artillery hammering away at thick stone, and Clarke Griffin wakes up.

Rolls her neck, takes off the heavy apron; it only gets in the way.

Yesterday, 42 hadn’t worked; yesterday’s yesterday, 44 hadn’t. She’s tried every other number, every other possible signal to Fort Souville across the river; this was the last option. A division of 43 men. Enough to break through the forces, save the Fort.   

Save him.

She tells the men at the door, as she always does, about General Beauchêne’s orders. She mans the door, calling out to the men of the 124th. She grabs Hugo’s gun as he makes it safely past her, refuses to look at Arthur’s body still in the field, shoots at the men who killed him. She feels Bellamy’s eyes on her. Ignores them, pushes away from the Fort, grabs Arthur’s rifle, waits for the grenade. It comes, she bats it from the trench, and lets her shoulders fall.

That’s it for now.

She can feel him behind her, feel his disbelief, his awe.

“Hello, Bellamy,” she says, wishing time made this easier.  

When she turns, he looks as he always does—tired, so tired, but ever hopeful.

“How are you here?” he asks, and he frowns a little, unsure of the way to vocalize the million emotions he’s processing.

“Nurse’s Corps,” she says, gesturing to her apron, and adds, “Three years.”

He nods, mute; she forgets which questions she answers before he asks and which she’s saying out of habit.

He doesn’t say anything else, just stares at her, and she wishes she could stay here forever. Not worry about the war, the fort, the salvation, just be here. Be with him. Exist in his sight and his alone, just float on light particles with nothing else.

43, she reminds herself.

“Come on,” she says quietly, “they need us inside.”

They make it across the field; Clarke could do it blindfolded by now, but she gives Bellamy a minute to adjust to the light and thick air inside Fort Vaux. She leads the way down the tunnels, absently lifting her skirt over the mud and corpses, and counts mentally.

“Duck,” she calls, and the building shakes, and they continue on.

She paces them; she’s better about that these days, making sure they don’t have to run. They break into the hallway, the first hallway, from the first time she realized she was stuck. Clarke no longer tells the men about reinforcements; she’s discovered that attacking is surer than defense. She pulls back the weakened sandbags, asks the soldier—whose life she’s bargained with, and saved, and lost, over and over and over again—for a grenade, and he gives her one.

She no longer counts, just knows she’s right.

She pulls the pin, throws the grenade through, and replaces the bag. The men yelp, race away from the barricade; Clarke follows them and Bellamy follows her.

He always follows her.

As they leave the hallway, she hears the explosion, the roaring of liquid fire and the screams.

She picks up a pack of bullets from Bernard; hands them to Raphael as they pass the galley.

She could wait for the flamethrower.

But she steps quicker, steps in to the tunnel before him, meets his eyes as she fires twice.

She circles back to the galley, quick little motions. She promises Alexandre she’ll write his letter tomorrow, tells Danielle’s lover how brave he is, gives rations to the men who will remove the dead.

Clarke swipes laudanum from one of the tables and as they leave the galley, and find a man with a chest would just outside; she gives him sleep.

For all the clockwork and efficiency of her routine, it does her good to see someone’s shoulders lift as they relax.

She misses that.

They pass a crowded hallway and Clarke yells a translation down it; she snatches the carrier pigeons before they turn to down stuffing.  

She puts the cage on another table, and leads Bellamy up the tower.

The man in the window leaves, pressing a mirror into Clarke’s hands.

She lets out a slow breath, then signals carefully.

Now they wait.

She leans back, her shoulders resting against the stones of the tower. Soon, she thinks, soon we’ll know.

There’s a burst of artillery outside and Clarke jolts, pushing away from the wall. Below, a troupe of men crouches under rapid fire from the enemy guns.

“Come on,” she whispers, feeling Bellamy move to watch beside her.

Their eyes follow the men in the trenches, their slow and steady progress.

Their progress.

“Come on,” Clarke begs, her knuckles white as her hands clench into fists at her side. “Please.”

The 43 don’t make it.

But 26 of them do.

26 of them flank the gun. 26 of them overpower the enemy trenches, 26 of them turn the gun. 26 of them hold the Northwestern ridge.

When it happens, it’s surreal.

She did it.

Clarke lets out a long breath and she lifts a hand to the glass.

“Wait!” Bellamy pushes away from the wall, and steps between her and the window, eyes wide.

Clarke frowns. “Bellamy, what—”

“Be careful you don’t…” he trails off as he catches her hands in his. He turns her fingers carefully over in his, expression growing increasingly confused. “You’re not bleeding.”

Clarke blinks. “What? No of course not, I didn’t—”

She stops, registering.

There’s no way.

She’s not bleeding...today.

Because she didn’t break the window...today.

But she did bleed, once, and she did break the window.

“What is happening?” Bellamy’s voice is low, and he’s holding her hands so carefully, so tenderly, like she’ll vanish if he’s not careful. “You were bleeding, Clarke, your hands and then you—”

He blanches and rushes to the door. Faintly, Clarke can hear footsteps on the stairs.

Bellamy opens the door, runs down the stairs. He fires, and the men fall. When he comes back into the room, his face is strained.

“What’s going on, Clarke?”

“You remember?” she whispers. It’s all she can manage, all she can bear, because it’s been so long, so long that she’s been alone. So long she’s borne this alone.

He nods.

He nods and Clarke finally understands.

_We’ll rest when all this is over, Nurse Griffin._

They saved the fort. It...it’s over.

She’s shaking. She doesn’t realize it until Bellamy’s holding her, until his arms are soothing over her back. He’s whispering something to her, soft and calming, peaceful, and it just makes her cling to him all the more. Because he’s here, he’s real, and she’s still alive and the fort is still standing and they made it.

Clarke’s eyes close, and for the first time in as long as she can remember, she doesn’t feel the weight of the world as she forces them open again.

She’s just here.

Held by a man who she loves, who she’d lost, and lost, and lost again. Who she’d found. Who had found her. Who had helped her as she saved them, and now, now she can finally rest.


End file.
